Security management Toolkit

Story: ID cards: Aviation workers being 'used politically'

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Wow !

Hi there Mr. Thinkfeeldo,

You really have drunk the coolaid huh? Eitehr that or this is a pure Troll .. well for the benefit at least of those that read your comment and felt moved to agree ......

Time and again we are told by senior security service officers, police officers, security theory academics and now the airline industry as well that this system will not work as presented and will certainly not improve on the systems they already have in place airside.

Your thesis seems to be that anything is better than what we already have. You seem utterly convinced that a grilling at the new IPS interrogation centres will improve on the vetting process already in place when the people who actually run the airports and airlines and the unions who represent the professionals actually involved vociferously disagree.

We have recently been treated to an admission from those responsible that they cannot guarantee the security of the information in the database.

We have local authorities all over the country stating publicly, in the form of binding motions, that they want no part of this scheme.

We have a majority of the population saying that they dislike and distrust this scheme and a significant number taking the no2id pledge that they will refuse to have one of these things, even on pain of fines and imprisonment. An MP took this pledge the other day.

Why then do you think all this is inevitable?

It is pure security theatre, all the way down the line. Same as the nit-picky, pointless new regulations about what you can and can't take on a plane in hand luggage. It is there, quite simply, to make the traveling public feel like "Something" is being done; exactly like they asked. What they should have have asked for is that something "*Useful*" be done. That may well have happened as well, but these regs and most certainly the ID card and database are very much NOT a part of the useful variant.

I think you are suffering from a variation of NIMBYism in that you believe all these heinous things they are proposing to now allow will happen in someone else's back yard and not in yours. You after all are a model citizen aren't you. No way could any of this stuff apply to you?

Well it seems to have applied to people down my neck of the woods who's crime is having two houses, one of which wasn't in the catchment for the school their kid went to. The local authorities used their new anti-terror (sic) powers to spend tax money spying on them and having them followed.

It seems to have applied to an old man. A Labour stalwart, who had the criminal (apparently) audacity to say "Rubbish" during a speach by one of our untouchable senior politicos.

The laws will apply to you friend, in the same way that they WON'T apply to the jokers who made them. You will, if the scheme doesn't collapse before then, have to supply reams of info about yourself to an admittedly insecure database and be scanned and collected. This will then be used to hook into a whole pile of other databases, making a near complete photograph of every aspect of your life. That pile of data will then be available to every tom dick and harry who takes a shilling from HMG. I have heard expert estimates that one in ten of the working population will be able to access the database legally, that's how big "The State" is these days. So take your street; on average somebody in every 6th or 7th house will be able to get chapter and verse on you. Do they need it. Oh that's need to know (wink wink). Will they use it responsibly? Welllllllll, of course they will. No government employee has ever been found guilty of misusing ... erm ... ah .. well actually a few might have been. Well, actually quite a lot have been. OK there's been a positive epidemic of data leaks through both malicious intent and pure incompetence.

Please, please bear in mind that Star Trek is fiction. Life doesn't work like that in reality. You maybe want to have another look at the old masters ... 1984 and A Brave New World to name but two. Like graphic novels? Try V for Victory.

I challenge you.

Read http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/whyNot.php

and come back with some real reasons why the arguments given (by actual experts mark you) to oppose the scheme are false.

I look forward to your response.

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